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I didn't know Eartha had gone too, that's sad, she was a true beauty of life. Dave 2008/12/26 Kenneth Wolman <[log in to unmask]>: > Susan Holahan wrote: >> >> Just for the record: Pinter's death led the NY Times front page >> here--until Eartha Kitt's knocked him off. > > Two major ones departing the same day reminds me with characteristic > irrelevance of Aldous Huxley dying the same day as John F. Kennedy. In the > current instance, who will get lost? > > I happened to like Eartha. To a teenage boy growing up in New York, the > sound of her voice was like someone sticking her hand in my crotch. She had > the most astonishingly sexual delivery I've every heard, and to this day I > don't know how she got away with it, either on record or on TV. The she-cat > persona worked for her, I suppose almost from the start, and continued to do > so. > > Lesser know about her is her mentoring of younger performers. She took > under he wing a young black operatic bass named Bruce Hubbard. Hubbard was > hired to record Joe in a studio reference recording of the uncensored 1927 > score of Kern's "Showboat." When I say uncensored, I mean that "colored > folks" didn't work on the Mississippi, "niggers" did. And that obscene word > was all over the score and script. Hubbard reportedly was horrified and > didn't know if he could continue. Kitt was a counselor and friend who is > supposed said that Hubbard owed it to his history, the history of his > people, to show the ugliness as well as the progress made since. That word > was part of his legacy and the legacy of drama, and for a recording that was > as much an historical preservation project as a recording of a great musical > play, keeping the words intact was critical. > > So Hubbard recorded it "come scritto." It's shocking no matter how often > you hear it. > > Sadly, Hubbard died in the early 1990s of AIDS. But his delivery of "Ol' > Man River" is surpassed only by Robeson's. Or so I humbly suggest.... > > Ken, still out in Snow County > -- David Bircumshaw Website and A Chide's Alphabet http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.bircumshaw/ The Animal Subsides http://www.arrowheadpress.co.uk/books/animal.html Leicester Poetry Society: http://www.poetryleicester.co.uk